Message #13: Holy Rollers

(Message sent Sat, 11 Nov 2006 00:43:57 -0700)

Just after sending my last email I had one of those extraordinarily unsettling and confronting experiences that nothing can quite prepare you for. I had heard of the "holy rollers," men who roll along the roads (sideways, like a log), sometimes for hundreds of kilometres, for reasons that I don't think I would understand even if they were explained to me. Well I encountered two of these guys as I was walking down the main market road from the fort towards my palace. They were rolling up the street, towards the fort. They were both horribly maimed. The lead guy, quite rotund, had one leg missing entirely, and the other was missing from above the knee. His friend, very skinny, had one normal leg and one that was withered and twisted and bent in ways that a leg shouldn't be. One of them had a hand missing too, the arm ending in a bandaged stump. The two worked in tandem. The lead guy would sing a line, his friend would sing a line in reply, both would push their begging bowls further up the street, and then they would do a complete roll to catch up with their bowl. Then the lead guy would sing again, and the cycle would repeat. I suspect that they had been at it all day.

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